So, as promised, my thoughts on Catastrophea… oh very much dear…
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Thanks for sharing this! This certainly sounds like a strange piece of written Who, especially when coming from someone as beloved as Dicks!
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Finished the Deviant Strain today. I enjoyed it, though I think I’ll save my thoughts for the book club
Just started Time of your Life. Only one chapter in and I’m really liking it. It’s a strange experience, getting a prose based companion introduction, but Steve Lyons infuses Angela’s story with that same magic that episodes like Rose and The Pilot had. It’s especially cool to see this kind of approach done with a non-modern day companion, as it means Lyons has to deal with a whole lot of world building too.
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Please keep us updated with your thoughts on Time of Your Life!! Some very interesting things happen in that book
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The Adventures of K9. Kids stuff but rather quick.
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Binging the short fiction and comics from the old Torchwood Magazine
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Will do. Finished chapter 3 now. The whole thing’s starting to give me Bad Wolf vibes. One of the tv channels is even called Wolf! It seems Russel has been at the epicentre of the Goblin King’s coincidences for a while now. Also, Raymond Day getting replaced by an AI aged really well.
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Starting Dreams of Empire. I’ve heard interesting things about this novel so I’m excited to see where it takes me.
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I’m straying from the path of righteousness and reading Ready Player One (but The Last Dodo is also sitting on my bedside table).
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Finally! I believe we’d all love to know what you think (I do at least, having quite liked it).
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Just finished Invasion of the Cat-People. I enjoyed it, not amazing but not as bad as its reputation suggests, definitely enjoyed it more than some of Russell’s other novels.
Gonna continue with Winner Takes All and will maybe start either Nightshade or War of the Daleks next.
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I really enjoy War of the Daleks. Yes, it tries to retcon every televised Daleks story. But, that said, it worked well enough for me and was action-packed and just a fun fast-paced read.
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I do enjoy Cat-People, it’s a fun read! I enjoyed it more than Scales of Injustice actually. I think Legacy is far and away better than either of Russell’s VMAs personally tho.
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I read it back in 2017, I’m looking forward to reading it again, especially having now experienced all the Classic Who Dalek stories in some format at least. I remember enjoying it a lot, hopefully I will enjoy it again!
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started Ten Little Aliens last night. Owned the book for, well its the 50th anniversary edition so over a decade now without ever getting around to reading it. I don’t think I’ve read a full Doctor Who novel before, some short story collections, and weirdly the class novels, but weirdly not a full length Doctor Who book. Looking forward to it, read the foreward last night which made it sound really interesting, and the book itself had been good so far, although I’m not very far in, not even finished chapter one yet
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Finished Time of Your Life. Wow, that was a lot.
Firstly, I loved everything with the Sixth Doctor. Lyons perfectly captured that manic energy of his tv portrayal, where he can flip from charming and sweet to rude and insufferable in an instant. I also loved how the story directly interrogates those flaws, with the Doctor worrying about how his behaviour could bring forth the Valeyard, as well as him blaming his own pig headedness for getting Angela killed. It’s nice to see the beginnings of that self reflection brewing here.
But in true Saward fashion, these moments get a bit lost in the mix with the various side characters and sub plots. I did have fun with most of these grotesque and insane people, but it definitely felt Resurrection/Revelation esque where I started questioning the point of some of them, especially when most of them are violently murdered in the blood bath that is Chapter 11. As someone who’s only dipped their toes into wilderness years content, it was bit too extreme for my liking. I think the final chapter definitely paid off everything with the surviving characters though. When the people of Torrok were being executed by peacekeepers, and the Watchers planned to kill everyone, I started worrying that I’d be in for a downbeat ending, but then the Meson station survivors banded together, saved the day, and began building a better tomorrow for the planet, which I found incredibly heart warming.
Regarding the companions, I really loved Angela. That first chapter with her and the Doctor on Torrok was a gripping read. But then she was abruptly killed off three chapters in. While I do like the idea of the Doctor getting a potential companion killed off because of his own arrogance and stubbornness, I do wish she’d had stuck around for a larger chunk of the book. As for Grant Markham, I’m not sure I can make a fair assessment yet. I learned beforehand that the book was originally going to feature Mel in Grant’s role, and the writing made it very easy to envision Bonnie Langford. I am curious to see how he develops in Killing Ground, and whether or not he’ll retain the somewhat effeminate coded characterisation he has in this book.
I was quite surprised by the unsubtle parallels to Doctor Who and television, mainly in the “Mary Whitehouse had a point” stance that it took on the matter. It almost read like Lyons was accepting that Doctor Who had it’s time as a television show, and that it’s better off free from the messy office politics. For some reason I just never thought any fans could be content with the cancellation at the time, but it does oddly make a lot of sense. It was like experiencing a nice time capsule of 90’s fandom.
Speaking of topical, Jubilee towers replacing Raymond with an AI recreation, along with the datavore blindly accepting the tv shows as the truth and being incapable of understanding life hit very different in the year of our lord 2024. The scenes where the Doctor is struggling to convince it of the value of life was chilling, and I loved how it only begins to understand when faced with it’s imminent mortality. God that was tragic.
Overall, while a bit bloated, I had an enjoyable time with this one. Not the time of my life mind you, but it was still fun. I’m not sure what to read next though. While I do own Killing Ground, a part of me wants to take a quick break from Steve Lyons. I was thinking of potentially getting started on one of the EDAs that I recently bought; but I got a bit of a random selection, and am a little worried about whether any of what I got was a viable jumping on point.
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That is a good price for it!
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I bought it used via the interwebs - 0,30 £ for the comic, 4 £ for international postage. Still a very fair price I’d say 
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Might start to look for international shipping of used stuff. It feels like the used stuff here in Sweden is almost more expensive since they are often out of print.
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